Peace Process: More Pilate Diplomacy by Clinton Team

By Eugene Bird

Consistency is not in the vocabulary of modern diplomacy. The story is told that then-Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen decided that the time had come in 1991 for the United States to hint that it was prepared to recognize the reality that Ethiopia had been defeated in its 35-year effort to suppress the rebellion of the Eritrean freedom movement. He told some reporters that the U.S. was prepared under certain conditions to recognize Eritrea as an independent nation.

All hell broke loose. Secretary of State James Baker III telephoned his assistant secretary and asked him what he thought he was doing, breaking up a country that had been recognized by the United Nations and been given the old Italian colony of Eritrea as a reward for its years of support of the allied cause in World War II. Didn't he realize, Baker asked, that it was inconsistent to suggest that Ethiopia was breaking up when at the same time the U.S. was trying to keep the Germans from recognizing Croatia and breaking up Yugoslavia?

“But Mr. Secretary, who says we have to be consistent?” Cohen asked. The secretary banged down the receiver, and Cohen thought for sure he was going to be retired. He was not, but the story illustrates a new principle of U.S. foreign policy: Be consistent only as long as it suits your long-range aims. Then find a new argument.

Cohen, of course, was right. He was only recognizing the new reality that Ethiopia itself was ready to negotiate a divorce from Eritrea.

Recognize Palestine?

Will some future assistant secretary of state suggest recognition of a Palestinian state and not get fired for it? The silent majority in Israel, according to the most recent polls, believe an independent Palestinian state is likely. Only Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his crew of Likud revisionists believe that the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza can be tamed and left to wither at a half-way house until they are absorbed as a rump political entity associated in some way with the Kingdom of Jordan.

Dore (“Dorey,” rhymes with sorry) Gold, Prime Minister Netanyahu's closest adviser on American affairs at the moment, recently has suggested that Israel does not fear King Hussein associating himself with Arafat during this difficult period. On the contrary, the natural thing is for the Palestinians to be associated with Jordan! Talk about spin-doctors!

King Hussein Barks at Netanyahu

King Hussein is reported by one mysterious source to have lashed out at Prime Minister Netanyahu at the famous luncheon in the White House on Oct. 1, in the presence of President Clinton and President Arafat. If he did, and it is somewhat believable, looking at the picture of a grim-faced Hussein at that very private luncheon table, it was partly because Dore Gold had visited him only a few hours before the famous and secretive opening of the tunnel in Jerusalem, and failed even to mention the subject. Not good diplomacy.

Meanwhile, all of Washington's press corps is jumping on the anti-Netanyahu bandwagon, including the Israeli-born and highly competent but very dedicated supporter of Israel Martin Seiff of the Washington Times . In a well-sourced story about the chorus of criticisms raining down on Netanyahu in Israel for his inept and fumbling attempts to stall while abandoning the land-for-peace process, Seiff said that the Israeli prime minister was conferring with few, except some hard-line old supporters of the Zionist revisionist Jabotinsky group that spawned Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Supposedly, even his major ministers such as David Levy and Ariel Sharon are fed up with being ignored by the prime minister. He never uses the Israeli Foreign Ministry and has little use for anyone in government.

Just Another Likudnik Leader Stalling?

Granted, Begin made peace with Egypt. Shamir agreed to go to Madrid, under heavy pressure from the first Texan secretary of state, James Baker III. But Shamir, according to Syrian sources, agreed to go only if the Syrians came and was both astonished and unhappy when President Hafez Al-Assad agreed that Syria would attend.

Of course, Shamir never intended to lose the next election and said later that he would have “negotiated for 10 years if necessary” to prevent any semblance of a Palestinian entity from coming into existence.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, at the summit in Washington and in a precedent-breaking two-way satellite call-in program from Jerusalem with the Arab world in mid-October, claimed he is not stalling. He wants peace with security. Warren Christopher had to remind him that there was of course no security in the Middle East without peace.

Major diplomatic writers and correspondents, including Tom Friedman of The New York Times and former Deputy Secretary of State David Newsom, writing in The Christian Science Monitor , left no doubt that it was time for the United States to do more than just shuttle diplomacy. Newsom suggested that unless there was a redeployment, the real losers would be Netanyahu and Bill Clinton because of the inevitable resulting violence.

The Palestinian Street: It's All a Game. We Are The Losers

Voices of the Palestinian street were sounding after the summit in Washington a note of hopelessness and bitterness that left no doubt the summit was only a stop-gap measure. “It is all a game, and we are always the losers,” one of them told a reporter. Palestinians blame the soft U.S. treatment of Israel for the terrible impasse. Not only redeployment from Hebron, but a solution to the constant Israeli interference in the ordinary lives of ordinary people in the territories was the theme, echoed by an increasingly frustrated Arafat.

The State Department's director of the peace process, Ambassador Dennis Ross, remained in the Middle East way beyond his original schedule, trying to make effective an agreement already reached against continued Jewish settler provocation. Would it be better to disarm the settlers (or at least give them only hand guns) instead of re-arming the Palestinian police with lighter weapons? Or, at the least, re-arm both with pistols instead of automatic rifles? That might have happened under Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin but never under Netanyahu.

Another Carrot for Israel?

Then, in mid-October, the Israeli defense minister suddenly rushed to the Pentagon for serious talks. About what? A reward system, some new gimmicks to restart the Israeli redeployment? Whatever it is, it's a good bet that it will cost the American taxpayer additional aid to Israel to bring about even a modest Israeli redeployment in Hebron.

The list of Palestinian grievances with the old peace process makes it hard to see how the two parties by themselves, or even with the help of the ubiquitous Dennis Ross, can reach an agreement that will last. Two years ago, talking about the American-born Jewish settlers in Hebron and their attitude problem in constantly provoking the Palestinians, an assistant to Foreign Minister Peres said, “Well, if we remove the IDF, they will either come to terms with where they are, or move out, and I believe they will for the most part move out.” Move out the settlers? It gets less and less likely.

U.S. Supports Settler Continuance In Hebron?

With a report by the settlers that a U.S. Department of State spokesperson had indicated that Hebron's Jewish population dated back for thousands of years, the U.S. appeared to weigh in on the Israeli side again, while wringing its hands over the delay in redeployment.

With the peace process skidding out of control, it may be saved by the U.S. getting tough for the first time in almost 40 years and with the “recognition states” from Morocco through Tunisia to Egypt, Jordan, Oman and Qatar, forcing reality on the Israelis. Promoting and meeting with the opposition figures such as Peres and President Weizman may be just the formula for a break-through on Hebron. But will it work in the long run on the tough issues of uninterrupted access to Jerusalem for Palestinians, turning over the lion's share of the West Bank to the Palestinians as was agreed under Oslo II, and finally lead to a sharing of control over Jerusalem? Not likely.

Those of us working on contradictions related to the continued existence of Israel and justice for the Palestinians, may have a lifetime career ahead of us. But our efforts can be made easier by presidents of the United States, who are only elected for four years at a time. After they leave office they become valuable free agents, often speaking truthfully about the Israel-Palestine dispute. X

Eugene Bird, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest in Washington, DC and diplomatic correspondent for the Washington Report.

SIDEBAR 1

Israel Compliance Watch

Caught again BY AN ISRAELI LIE: After the Washington summit, an American official briefed reporters in the White House and emphasized that Prime Minister Netanyahu had promised immediately to increase to 50,000 the number of Palestinian workers permitted to work in Israel. The U.S. believed, the official said, that this would help the Palestinian Authority a great deal, and it was hoped Israel would permit 60,000 soon.

On Oct. 14, Israel reported that it was issuing 35,000 permits, not 50,000, with 20,000 from the West Bank and 15,000 from Gaza.

Since the permits are now issued by Israel through the Palestinian Authority Labor Office, it is easy to track them. The actual number issued was 3,800, barely more than 10 percent of the number claimed, and only 7 percent of the number promised by the prime minister to Bill Clinton in the White House two weeks earlier.

There is no requirement by the U.S. Congress for the administration to report compliance by Israel with its promises and agreements in the peace process. The Palestinians, by contrast, have a tough 90-day reporting requirement imposed on the administration by Republican Rep. Benjamin Gilman of New York, the ultra-Zionist chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. —E.B.

SIDEBAR 2

Damage Control on Behalf of Israel

During the High-Profile visit of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri to Washington Oct. 16 to 18, the Department of State undertook damage control efforts on behalf of Israel after it shelled a Lebanese village, wounding 13 people.

In its first demonstration of the “Christopher Agreement” establishing a five-nation monitoring force to contain violence resulting from the continued occupation of southern Lebanon, the Department issued a special press release detailing results of the investigation by the monitoring group of the circumstances surrounding the Oct. 10 shelling after a mortar attack from Lebanese territory against the Israeli occupation zone.

The monitoring group did swing into action, investigating and for the first time talking directly with the Israeli gunnery unit responsible for the shelling. The Israeli representative on the monitoring group expressed “sorrow” at the injuries and damage and the Lebanese and Syrian representatives expressed the view that the shelling was deliberate, i.e., that the original mortar attack that triggered the Israeli retaliation had not come from the village itself, but that the Israelis chose to fire directly at the nearest inhabited place. (This is the same pattern followed at Qana last spring in which some 100 Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge in a United Nations base were killed by Israeli shelling following a rocket attack from nearby.)

The strange world of south Lebanon, which for 15 years has been occupied by Israel with the apparent toleration if not official approval of the United States, now has a complaint bureau in the monitoring group, which was established only after great difficulty. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that the incident demonstrated that the monitoring group was able to prevent an escalation stemming from the attack. But the United States remains unable to speak plainly about the Israeli occupation of a part of southern Lebanon as the cause of the continued fighting, and the monitoring group remains unable to criticize Israel for firing into villages in response to Hezbollah attacks on Israel's declared zone of occupation.

Prime Minister Hariri was asked what would happen if the United States persuaded Israel to withdraw unilaterally, as some Israeli generals have recommended in recent months. He replied that the government of Lebanon could guarantee security on the international frontier if that happened but, he added, “that is not going to happen. They [the Israelis] won't do that.”

When Israel failed to withdraw from Gaza in 1957, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles simply told Tel Aviv that the United States “would not reward aggression.” They threatened that the U.S. tax exemption on donations to Israel would be cut off unless Israel withdrew. The Israelis did so. With Israel now dependent not only on tax exempt donations from American Jews, but also on direct U.S. military and economic grants totaling some $3.5 billion annually, plus an additional $2 billion in annual U.S. loan guarantees, Israel is far more vulnerable to U.S. pressure today than it was in 1957.

Ironically, nothing in the opinion of all objective observers of the south Lebanon situation, would contribute more to the peace process at this point than a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. But, given the track record of the Clinton administration, Hariri is right. “It's not going to happen.”—E.B.